The city of Portland is located in the state of Oregon. The largest dam demolition and river restoration plan in the world could be close to reality.
The vote by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the last major regulatory hurdle and the biggest milestone facing a $500 million demolition proposal championed by Native American tribes and environmentalists for years.
If the application to surrender the dams' operating license is approved, the parties overseeing the project will accept license transfer and begin removing the dams as early as this summer. Amy Souers Kober is a spokeswoman for American Rivers which monitors dam removal and advocates for river restoration.
She said it was an important milestone. The most important lesson of the project is the leadership of the tribes. The rivers will be restored because of the tribes.
Tom Kiernan, president of American Rivers, said that the vote comes at a critical time when climate change is hitting the Western United States with long-term dry spells. Allowing the river to flow naturally and its flood plains and wetlands to function normally would mitigate the impacts.
He said that allowing the river system to be healthy is the best way to manage floods.
It is better to have that river flow and allow the flood plains and wetlands to absorb the water and bring it down to the ground.
The Klamath Basin is home to more than 14,500 square miles and was once the third largest salmon producing river on the west coast. The dam built between 1918 and 1962 cut the river in half and prevented salmon from reaching their spawning grounds upstream. Salmon runs have been decreasing for a long time.
The tribes rely on the salmon in the Klamath River for their way of life and brought the dams down to make that happen. The Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa tribes plan to light a bonfire and watch a meeting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on a remote sandbar in the hopes of renewing the river.
The vice chairman of Yurok told The Associated Press before the meeting that he was excited but anxious about the vote.
He said that they have been let down a lot over the last 20 years. We have a chance if there is still salmon in the water. The people have to come down. It's our existence that's important.
The removal of the dams has been controversial.
A group of homeowners who live around Copco Lake have fought the dam removal plans for years and say the value of their lakefront homes has plummeted. The money set aside to cover the demolition isn't adequate, and that cost overruns and liability concerns would fall on the shoulders of taxpayers, according to a coalition formed to oppose the demolition plan.
Richard Marshall, head of the Siskiyou County Water Users Association, said that they don't know if removing the dams will help salmon because of changes in the Pacific Ocean.
Will this increase the production of salmon? He said that it has everything to do with what is happening in the ocean. Nobody has ever tried to take care of the problem without removing the dam.
Rate payers in the rural counties around the dams are angry that the project is funded by a voter-approved water bond in California.
The proposal was almost killed by the U.S. regulators due to the potential for cost overruns and liability issues.
The utility would face steep costs to add fish ladders and other environmental mitigations to the outdated dams in order to renew their hydroelectric license and in recent years has diversified their energy portfolio enough to absorb the loss of the dams.
The license surrender must be approved by Oregon, California and the Klamath River Renewal Corporation before work can begin. Regulators could either approve it or reject it.
Craig Tucker is a natural resources policy consultant for the Karuk Tribe. The hope is that the river will be fully back in its channel by the end of the century.
Kober said that the scope of the project surpasses the previous largest dam demolition in the US. She said that environmental experts don't know of any other river restoration project with a bigger scope than the one planned for the lower Klamath.
As of February, 1,959 dams have been demolished across the U.S. The majority of those have come down in the past 25 years.
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